Wireless communication systems have developed through various generations, including a first-generation analog wireless phone service (1G), a second-generation (2G) digital wireless phone service (including interim 2.5G and 2.75G networks) and third-generation (3G) and fourth-generation (4G) high-speed data and Internet-capable wireless services. There are many wireless communication systems in use, including Cellular and Personal Communications Service (PCS) systems. Exemplary cellular systems include the cellular Analog Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS), digital cellular systems based on Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA), Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA), the Global System for Mobile access (GSM) variation of TDMA, and newer hybrid digital communication systems using both TDMA and CDMA technologies. More recently, Long Term Evolution (LTE) has been developed as a wireless communications protocol for mobile phones and other terminals to communicate data at high speeds. LTE is based on GSM, and includes contributions from various GSM-related protocols such as Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) protocols such as High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA).
One service that has experienced significant increases in popularity in recent years is video calling due to the ever-increasing ability to transfer substantial data over a network at high speeds. In general, video calling is a feature whereby video and audio content are received via a downlink and sent via an uplink for the purpose of face-to-face communication. Video calls can be made over an LTE network via an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) video call (e.g., using the Video-over-LTE or ViLTE service) and other available application (e.g., FaceTime, Skype, Messenger, etc.). However, when one or more users are not active on the camera during a video call, the uplink data has no significance for the end-to-end video call because the user who is inactive on the camera has no visual appearance for the user at the other end of the video call. As such, when a user is outside the area visible to the camera, transmitting the video content may waste resources at both the transmitting and receiving ends in addition to introducing unnecessary network congestion. These issues may have a wider impact in conference calls or other group calling scenarios because every available user participating in the group call has to receive and decode the inactive user video content.